Museum night at National Library of Estonia 

One Saturday evening in May each year, museums and other memory institutions open their doors later than usual, at a symbolic price or even for free, to celebrate the pan-European Museum Night. The Estonian Museum Association has been organising Museum Nights since 2009.

This year the Museum Night took place for the 15th time under the motto “There’s Freedom in the Night!”, bringing more than 71,000 visitors to museums on an unusually summery evening of 18 May. Nearly 200 memory institutions across Estonia participated. The National Library of Estonia has been contributing with its own programme for many years. This time we offered the freedom to play, discover, move, enjoy, listen and learn.

Our programme began with the traditional architecture tour to the different buildings that have accommodated the National Library.

The next event was a family evening for parents and their little ones, which focussed on insects, with the aim of talking about nature and learning to value the creatures living around us. Several important issues were discussed: how many feet a fly has, who is the strongest insect, why bees dance. Our guest was a 9-year-old schoolboy Kirret Steinberg, the proud owner of stick insects, who brought some of them also to the family evening.

All games fans could play board games with instructors, or video games in the video game museum.

The evening progressed in the mood of live music, featuring Kaisa Ling – a colourful blues artist who calls herself the future Grand Old Lady of Estonian blues. Kaisa also held a workshop where she spoke about the vocal apparatus and advised how to use it wisely.

A public recording of a podcast on a human-centred public space followed – the interior architect of the Tõnismäe building of the National Library, Ville Lausmäe, spoke about the public interior space, focussing on the main features of library space as an open space for all.

On the Museum Night and also the nights before and after, the National Library opened a night library, inviting students to come study in its comfortable and quiet environment.

Photo Gallery

Photos by Aron Urb